Tag Archives: socialism

Capitalism is, in this country, synonymous with American Christianity, specifically the kind that misquotes the Bible to say “if a man doesn’t work, he shouldn’t get any handouts from us.” Capitalism is, in theory, about a person’s merits and earning potential, about hard work, about rising up ahead of everyone else because your ideas or products are more sellable to the population at large than the next guy’s. Ayn Rand, the fair-weather darling of Republican ideology, is the high priestess of purist capitalism, where it’s every man for himself, because why take care of someone who can’t hack it? That’s welfare — that’s rewarding laziness.

Of course, many Americans who claim to support capitalism are a far cry from pure capitalists, and here’s why: they give a certain people handouts without them ever having come close to earning it — specifically their kids. People like Donald Trump are handed millions upon millions in inheritance, and somehow they conclude that they’ve earned this money because they were born into the right family. Take note that Ayn Rand did not encourage this kind of behavior at all, writing to her niece, “I want you to drop — if you have it in your mind — the idea that you are entitled to take money or support from me, just because we happen to be relatives… no honest person believes that he is obligated to support his relatives.” Furthermore, she demanded, on pain of writing her niece off as a “rotten person,” that her niece pay back $25 instead of accepting it as a gift.

Rand herself did not have children, explaining on multiple occasions that having children inhibited people’s ability to live life and prosper from their labor. She wholeheartedly supported abortion, saying that for young, ambitious parents, “pregnancy is a death sentence: parenthood would force them to give up their future, and condemn them to a life of hopeless drudgery, of slavery to a child’s physical and financial needs. The situation of an unwed mother, abandoned by her lover, is even worse.”

And, in fact, if the burden of raising children rests entirely on those who produce them, being a single mother to an unplanned, unfunded child is essentially impossible. You cannot actually work for a living while you’re puking from morning sickness, let alone taking care of an infant by yourself. Or at least you can’t if you’re working for a capitalist employer who expects to get an honest, full day’s work out of you, no excuses. Pure capitalism and the anti-abortion ethos are fundamentally opposed to one another, unless, as Ayn Rand proposed, you’re intent on creating misery for its own sake. This is probably one reason why socialist countries have lower abortion rates than countries where abortion is illegal.

Additionally, if you’re going to argue for capitalism on the merits of the individual, you have to refrain from giving your kids anything beyond basic sustenance. Otherwise it’s not capitalism — it’s class reinforcement, oligarchy, a hangover from the days of the monarchs. And, no, you are not a good judge of whether or not your kid is so amazing that he/she deserves a million dollars just for existing.

Given all this, I would argue that almost nobody wants the kind of world where pure capitalism is the law of the land. The world that Ayn Rand envisions is a cold, cruel, entirely mechanical one, where charity is a dirty word and the sole purpose of existence is getting ahead. Ayn Rand praises the kind of woman who looks at her children, her nieces or nephews, and says: you’d better work for this cracker, kid, or you’ll go hungry tonight. How about you sing the alphabet to me. Ok, now we’re going to put the video on YouTube and see if anyone will hire you to do acting work. Huh, looks like nobody liked the video. You suck, kid. You don’t get the cracker. Stop crying, weakling; I’m teaching you to sing better.

Nobody (or, at least, no sane, non-abusive person) does this with their own children. However, many are more than happy to do it to the children of strangers. These are the children who had better earn their lunches, earn their way to decent education, earn their way to an entry-level job. To offer them the same opportunities as your own children is terrible — it’s socialism.

I knew a family once that was Tea-Party level into conservative politics — Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin. The 37-year-old son had political aspirations, and wanted to take a hard line on being fiscally conservative, on cutting “entitlement” programs to nothing. Unsurprisingly, he was personally terrible with money, to the point that he was in debt and generally ignorant of his own bills. I once pointed out to him that he managed to be so lackadaisical because his mother bankrolled him, and told him this was the same thing as relying on welfare. He, of course, was not happy about the comparison, insisting that no, it was totally different! Because… it didn’t go through the government! Anyway, he really did earn his mother’s handouts: she was paying him $120,000 so that she could have a say in who he married. The law of supply and demand. He could supply her with a submissive, helpful daughter-in-law, or he could pick someone she hated.

This is the logical end result of pure capitalism, where money is the currency of everything, and where love is just an excuse to make poor business decisions. But remember, Christians: the love of money is the root of all evil, not giving too much to the poor or paying taxes.

So, as we round the corner into political season, remember this, particularly when some blowhard stands up and brags about making money by cheating widows out of their land. Remember this next time someone tries to vilify an opponent by calling them a “socialist” or claiming they want to tax millionaires. Their are worse things than wanting everyone to have a fair shot at life, regardless of their social status, income level or parenthood.

Socialism to the literary skeptic means 1984 (where Ingsoc, shorthand for English Socialism, rules with an iron fist for the Party’s good pleasure), or Harrison Bergeron (where everyone is pulled down to the lowest common denominator so that finally everyone is equal). To the redneck, it means not being able to call any land his own*. To George Orwell, it meant “liberty and justice” — provided, of course, that it wasn’t perverted like every other political philosophy in the world. To Wired magazine, it means the internet — open-sourced and crowdsourced forums. “When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it’s not unreasonable to call that socialism.” –Wired, “the New Socialism,” Kevin Kelly, June 2009.

You are reading this free of charge as I offered it free of charge. See? Socialism. You don’t even see any ads here.

Still, community-driven projects do not a commune make. Working towards a common goal and sharing the products results in church potlucks, Sorority sister clothes swaps, Amish barns, and strings of Constitutionalist pro se legal cases as well as hippie Co-ops. Community is not owned by the socialist. Community has always existed. One could even argue that Capitalism is a communal arrangement, since it is based on services within a community. It’s supposed to be “fair” in that if your service is worthless, or you’d rather lie in bed all day, you’re penalized by the community. Since it doesn’t quite work out that way, we have endless checks and balances, from tort law to Goodwill to unemployment.

The irony is that George Orwell blamed cheap luxuries for the indulgent state of the 20 million underfed Englishmen at the time — the cheap sweets, cheap clothes, cheap entertainment, and the penny on the lottery kept the coal miners and those on the dole sufficiently happy that they wouldn’t complain about the fact that their two-room houses were freezing and full of bugs, that they had little sanitation, that their nutrition was atrocious, and that they were wiling their lives away doing next to nothing.

Cheap luxuries are the opiates of the masses, not religion. And what cheaper luxury is there than the internet? Even if you can’t afford a second-hand laptop and some pilfered wifi, there’s always the public library. iPhones aren’t all that pricey, either — the Wall Street Journal recently had an article about a homeless man who kept up with everything via his vital daily social networking feeds.

You didn’t need a home or anything. You just need Facebook. This “new socialism” may prevent the old socialism in more ways than one (Or you could just call it bread and circuses, with the clever programmer replacing the clever chariot-racer. If Al Gore invented the internet, it was a smart political move).

*Currently, he calls even land mortgaged over its actual value his own. This is the great benefit of Equal Opportunity Capitalism, which is not the same thing as Socialism.

“Keep your life free from live of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never fail you nor forsake you.’ Hence we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid; what can man do to me?’ … for it is well that the heart be strengthened by grace, not by foods… do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” — Hebrews 13: 4-16.

Christians, and Americans by and large claim that faith, are supposed to adhere to the above passage. As many have noticed, Americans by and large are also materialists, capitalists, gunslingers devoted to their individual freedom, and/or envious of everyone more wealthy and successful than they are. The typical American’s knee-jerk reaction to this passage might be the question: “But this doesn’t mean we have to be poor because we’re Christians and share with, you know, the people who won’t use our stuff wisely, right?”

And the most honest answer would be, as Jim Wilson might say, well, because you asked, maybe it does. You should keep in mind that the founder of Christianity was a penniless, homeless Jewish man, who seemed to think being poor wasn’t such a bad estate and being rich just might be. His immediate reaction to financial oppression was in accordance with the Jewish law of giving four times as much as you originally took.

In this country at least, our errors tend to be of the selfish kind; rarely do we err on the side of being too generous. Rather, we keep boxes and boxes of stuff we don’t use on the off chance that it might come in handy someday. Rather, we buy the iPod, the more expensive appliance, the half-price Armani jacket, the book we’ll never read, the movie we may or may not even like, the knick-knack for the already-crowded shelf, because we suddenly, urgently need it. We may be defrauding another by doing this, particularly if, when we return home and place it on the shelf, it gets knocked over and broken, and its shards eat away our hearts. How dare this person be so stupid, so clumsy, so unconscious as to knock over something that didn’t belong to them? We will strike them from our will! They have obviously had too much leisure and too much luxury to understand the importance of possession, so they should be granted none. That’ll teach ‘em.

And we, being satiated with the importance of possession, nod knowingly, because we recognize the true value of Stuff.

The other day I was chatting about this concept with a co-worker, and mentioned that when I was a kid, my sister and I were fighting over a balloon. A common, cheap little balloon one of us had filled with air. My dad came over, took the balloon away, and popped it. He said: You must never let a thing become more important than your sister. At the time, I thought this barbaric (it was our balloon! He didn’t understand!) but looking back, it was a good lesson. My co-worker said: “That’s hella cool,” and proceeded to go home and clean out her house. She came in today with a sweater she thought would fit me and said as she was cleaning out all that stuff that no longer fit and were just taking up space, she repeated to herself: “it’s just a balloon. It’s just a balloon.”

By and large, it’s just a balloon, folks. I really like those shoes my grandmother gave me from the 1940s and I really liked my antique wedding ring (before it disappeared) and I really like my old journals and the photos I’ve taken and books I’ve collected and sand from different parts of the globe; my sweet French road bike and my more expensive but less sweet mountain bike; the clunky car my parents gave me for graduation—except it got dented from a deer and the door doesn’t open very well—the Hermes perfume I’ve only been able to find in Europe—and all that. But if I die, it’s just going to sit there. Or be used by somebody else. So why wouldn’t I share that stuff now, when it can actually do me some good to share it?

A semi-recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Want More Growth in China? Have Faith,” reports that Peter Zhao, a Communist party member/advisor to the Chinese Central Committee, is arguing that Christianity is the key to the West’s prosperity.

“He claims that Christianity produces greater wealth than other religions or no religion. His view is partly historical—the wealthiest societies are those that are either traditionally Christian, either Catholic or Protestant. He says that Christianity provides three elements necessary for economic growth: motivation—those who work for God rather than for pleasure, money or status don’t tire of being productive; a moral framework that makes for less exploitation and less corruption; and a mandate to care for the poor and disenfranchised. ‘Traditionally,’ he says ‘when Chinese become rich, they buy houses or maybe they marry a second wife.’ But they start to become lazy. Not so with Americans. ‘Even Bill Gates is still working very hard.’”

The article also points out that John Wesley, another man to make this connection, warned of its consequences: “religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches.”

Indeed, the Bible warns of the temptations of the rich. Jesus’ words, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” however bizarre, make it quite clear that those accustomed to riches may find them hard to forswear, even if they know it is good to do so. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the Gospels speak of the simple joys of life and against those who have gorged themselves on riches, particularly when a brother lacks. The man who increased his barns to eat, drink and be merry later in life was called a fool, at least partially because he died before he could ever enjoy them.

Similarly, many Americans have taken their work ethic far and above the teachings of Christianity. Riches and material possession are never lauded in the Bible. Enjoying the “wife of your youth,” and sharing with those in need is. In this way Christianity should produce honest workers (as pastors and employers teach), those devoted to doing right in the workplace, but no more than they are devoted to doing right elsewhere.

The error of a Christian society is that it may well produce hypocrisy; the sheen of doing right by an employer or wife or brother when the heart of the matter is different. Often, the sheen of doing right can be rewarding itself; as Peter Zhao noticed, Christian societies admire hard work and creation and “random acts of kindness,” even if one is not kind to the people closest at hand, or is working merely to store up wealth for a self-contained retirement.

Thus, many Americans, Christian and otherwise, answer the call to work 50,60,70 hours a week, to the detriment of every other part of their lives. They even continue the cult of business outside of work: they multitask while eating, researching, or even sleeping (hypnosis to stop smoking on tape); they shop, golf, take up Japanese, or watch football to improve their image and gain ground with their boss. If they’re older, they antibacterialize their houses and stretch plastic over their couches to protect their assets, and then coddle Fido because they don’t have many real friends to turn to, never having had the time to build friendships, particularly not with their children or grandchildren. If they’re young they jump on the social web to network and make inane comments for an hour on various acquaintances’ walls, and maybe jet over to a friend’s house to make inane comments in person—about shopping, golf, how they’ve taken up Japanese, or football.

This doesn’t take much thought and thus they will not be intellectually taxed the next day when they wake up at 6 a.m. to do their hair for work.

I make no mention of those of the younger generation who actually are too lazy to do anything but go to a third-rate college for 17 years while they party. This is the result of riches, too: they have found a way to use the obsessive productivity of their parents. Or they accrue so much debt they are forced to work 50,60,70 hours a week upon graduation to pay it off, with or without the skill to make working 60 hours in this country better than working 35 hours in another society.

Advertisements

About

Katie Botkin is based in the Northern Rockies, where she finds ample opportunity to explore and find quietus. She sees her family often. When she is not otherwise occupied, she blogs.